Monthly Archives: December 2007

I spent today mainly walking uphill: Luckily, temperatures seemed on the rise again, and at times I could take off my gloves for a few minutes. Really most of the day kind of looked like this: But initially leaving the city proved to be a bit of a hassle, since I was having a hard […]

Today was a good day: subzero temperatures, but good. I’d like to start off with this: “You make me 你让我” – happy. …the friendly group of workers who insisted on buying me lunch, the policemen who waved me in to have tea together, the countless motorcycle dudes who stopped and wanted to give me a […]

I’m not tough. I’m a sissy. …but I’ll tell you more about that later. First things first: I left Pingyao today, walking southwest on highway G108. Of course, behind the tourist sites, the city had yet another face: Sometimes I wonder what all of this must have looked like before progress demanded its toll. Anyways, […]

These are the shoes I’ve been wearing during the last couple of days: 50rmb. I just couldn’t stand the heavy boots anymore. Not over Christmas. Anyways, Juli just went home, and I am left alone in all the plush and the lush of my hotel room: Damn.

I found Pingyao to be a large rectangle that is bursting with history to look at. We decided to pick out only the sights with a rating of AAAA, like for example, China’s very first bank: Rishengchang 日升昌 was established in the late Qing-dynasty. It’s part of what this whole part of the country is […]

We spent Christmas hanging out in the Old Town: Beautiful place. Beautiful smile: Of course I miss my home over Christmas, but Juli really brightened up my day. …plus she took me to have a good sirloin steak with french fries in one of the restaurants primarily serving to foreigners. This is in fact a […]

Me and my fuzz are saying: “MERRY CHRISTMAS!” hoping all of you are well and having a nice & warm holiday season. I’m all good in Pingyao. Juli came to see me, we’re staying in a very good hotel having tons of food, and I’m not planning on moving much during the next couple of […]

Get on the good foot. Today was another day I started on the bad foot. This is the very first thing I see when I step out of the door: Dashan 大山 (big mountain) – China’s favorite foreigner: 100% flawless Chinese and the right kind of attitude. His ads for electronic pocket dictionaries are everywhere, […]

I woke up in the unholy smell of that hotel room this morning and thought: what a bad way to start the day. A bit of walking and the lungs full of fresh air cheered me up a bit though. Then I saw this goofball: Can goats possibly look even more ridiculous than sheep? I’m […]

A bowl of fried rice in the Agricultural University of Shanxi 山西农业大学: Someone had told me they had some foreign exchange students there, so I went. I gotta admit it: I would have really liked to see a pair of eyes that looked like mine for a change. But no foreigners were to be found. […]

I saw A LOT of sheep today. They are everywhere around here – right when I walked out the door, a flock: And this is the last photo I have from today, because I have lost all the others. I saw some sheep that looked funny. But I can’t show them to you. I went […]

Today was a breeze. Yuci is well-known for its rebuilt Old Town: A lot of Chinese movies and TV series have been shot here. I ran into some students from Shandong 山东 who were taking pictures dressed up in imperial outfits: To me, this subject is really interesting: How do people interact with their history? […]

Nothing happened today. I got up late and looked at the poster on the wall in front of my room: a handsome couple making love on the beach at sunset. I brushed my teeth, then I went to the local Internet place and stayed there basically all day. At around 3pm the place went down […]

Basically, the last 100km have just been seeing a lot of plain old walking on my part. Walking through all kinds of landscapes: This part of China, the province of Shanxi 山西, is very beautiful in some areas: It even reminded me of Bryce Canyon in a way. Rugged and wild. I didn’t climb down […]

The world has two faces: the city… …and the countryside. It seems as if more and more people are living in more and more populated places. – A part of the world with nobody inhabiting it? Beautiful, yet scary thought. I mean, I like the countryside. It can be great for taking pictures. But to […]

Too much walking today. There was no kind of accommodation between Yangquan and Shouyang, so I had to pull off the whole distance at once. First thing I noticed was this, though: And then, further down the same road: Now I am only guessing here, but I think that the red paper things have something […]

I decided to stay for another day, because my friends, the Yang Brothers, wanted to take me to a place called Dazhai 大寨 in the south of Yangquan: I don’t think that a lot of young people in China know about this agricultural showcase from the 60s and 70s anymore. For the older generations though, […]

At first it didn’t really look like I was going to shoot many pictures today, because the heating in this hotel softly convinced me to stay a bit longer: So I bought a coke and a bag of chips, some chocolate candy bars, a pound of tangerines and 16 yogurts (8 strawberry + 8 peach […]

I think the administration can sometimes look pretty intimidating: …even kafkaesque in a way. I was a bit grumpy in the morning, because AGAIN I had had a cold night’s sleep, so at the first chance I got I vented on some little kids: Three boys, all about 10 years old, standing on a street […]